window cleaner

...such a glorious day! I hope we get a few more like this before the year is out.

I have been thinking about a mini-series of notable local country houses and today was to be the first one but, as I approached, I was disappointed to see that it is undergoing some repairs that require scaffolding. Knowing that another building on my list was nearby, we changed course and walked down to Kimmeridge Bay, where L sat and soaked up the sunshine while I ran up the steps to the Clavell Tower.

The tower was built in 1830 by The Reverend John Richards Clavell. Why he built it, is not so clear, but there it has stood as both folly and seamark ever since. I say, there it has stood, however that is not entirely accurate because, by 2002, having stood derelict since the first world war, coastal erosion had left it perilously close to the edge of the crumbling cliff.

The Mansel family, who inherited the Smedmore estate through Clavell's niece, Louise Pleydell Mansel, had become concerned about the state and future of the tower as far back as the 1980s and had set up the Clavell Tower Trust as a vehicle to securing its future. English Heritage agreed, in principal, to the suggestion of dismantling it and relocating it a suitable distance from the cliff edge. The project was beyond the Trust's resources so they approached the Landmark Trust for help. The project was a great success and the South West Coast Path now passes between the still visible original footings and the re-sited tower, which is available to rent as a holiday cottage from the Landmark Trust.

Thomas Hardy drew the tower as a frontispiece for his Wessex Poems and, it is said that, he courted his sweetheart, Eliza Bright Nicholls here. Eliza was the daughter of a Kimmeridge coastguard. The tower even served as a coastguard lookout post from the 1880s until 1914.

Not a bad place to work, when your cleaning windows...